Editors Choice

Seriously, People, Just Get A COVID Vaccine

The extent that some people will go to try and prevent COVID baffles me to no end. Now, there are people advocating gargling with povodine-iodine! Oh. My. God.

Povodine-iodine is a skin antiseptic. It kills bacteria on the skin, and we have used it on the skin to disinfect prior to procedures. FYI, we no longer widely use it because it has been shown to be less effective than other skin antiseptics.

It has NEVER been designed to ingest orally. NEVER. It is quite poisonous, and it can actually kill you. The same goes with drinking chlorine bleach, which can also be used as an antiseptic. Drinking chlorine can kill you, and it should NEVER be used as a “COVID cure.”

Seriously, people, just get a COVID vaccine.

They are incredibly safe, and they have been shown to be incredibly effective at preventing you from dying from COVID. That’s the whole point of the vaccine: to prevent serious illness and death. No vaccine is a shield against infection, but what vaccines do is prime the immune system so that is is ready to fight off the virus if the body gets exposed to it.

And they have been doing their job quite effectively.

The data are overwhelming: where there are high rates of vaccination, the cases are under control. Where there are low rates of vaccination, the cases are out of control. I have seen it myself personally: it’s Armageddon where the vaccination rates are low, and where I normally practice, where vaccination rates are high, we have COVID cases but not nearly as bad as other parts of the country.

Ingesting bleach or povodine-iodine is idiocy and can kill you. You should NEVER do that for COVID. NEVER.

Seriously, people, just get a COVID vaccine.

Dr. Hesham A. Hassaballa

Dr. Hesham A. Hassaballa is a NY Times featured Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine specialist in clinical practice for over 20 years. He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Medicine, Critical Care Medicine, and Sleep Medicine. He is a prolific writer, with dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles and medical blog posts. He is a Physician Leader and published author. His latest book is "Code Blue," a medical thriller.

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